The present invention is concerned with containers such as may be used in the fishing industry for retaining lobsters and similar catches in a live condition during transit and/or storage. The containers may be used for retaining similar products, not necessarily in a live condition, but will be described herein as exemplified by their use for live lobsters.
In the lobster fishing industry, boxes for containing live lobsters are conventionally made of wood and may therefore be floated alongside the fishing boat or in a storage area, for example alongside a fish quay, with water free to circulate into and from the box and thus to keep the lobsters therein alive and fresh. Throughout the fishing industry in general, there has been a steady trend of fashioning fish boxes from synthetic polymeric materials. Such materials have considerable advantages, for example they are readily cleaned and kept in a clean condition and they may be lighter in weight than a corresponding conventional wooden box, but heretofore no such plastics fish box has been available which is suitable for lobsters. Although the plastics material itself may be buoyant, it is unable to float when the box is even partly filled with lobsters or another catch.